Recently, digital printing techniques have been rapidly spreading. The digital printing does not use any printing plate and therefore can be easily applied to a small amount of production. The digital printing thus copes with the recent short delivery time of a small lot production. Although the digital printing is not inferior to analog printing in the quality of ordinary printed matter, such as photographs and magazines, it still has many problems in thick film printing. Among the problems, a significant problem is the limitation in the ink and recording medium. In thick film printing, the information other than image information to be incorporated into printed matter is huge compared to that in ordinary printed matter. That is, it is important that there are many candidates of the recording medium and the ink (patterning) material. For example, a screen printing technique of the analog thick film printing technique can increase the value of a design by partially thickening a printed image or can print, for example, an electric circuit using an electrically conductive ink. In contrast, in an UV-IJ (ink jet) system and an electrophotographic system of the digital printing that can perform thick film printing, the ink (patterning) materials are strictly limited. In the UV-IJ, the materials are limited to photosensitive resins that can be discharged by IJ. In the electrophotographic system, the materials are limited to resins having specific static electric properties. Methods for increasing the degree of freedom in the ink (patterning) materials for thick film printing have been proposed. For example, in PTL 1, thick film patterns of a relatively variety of materials are prepared as follows: A high-precision thin film pattern of an ink is formed on a recording surface, a resin powder is allowed to adhere onto the ink pattern by means of the adhesion of the ink, and the ink pattern is formed into a coating film by, for example, melting to obtain a thick film pattern.